Former Girl Scouts Adopt Family for Christmas
Bottom: Tuttie Higgenbotham, Madeline Winterle, Avery Zullick, Hannah Blue, Audrey Bradehoft
When ten girls from Christ the King Catholic School realized they had not spent money left over from their Girl Scout days they went looking for a new way to make their money count.
They found Dallas CASA and an aunt raising her sister’s three children in addition to her own two. With five children under the age of eight, including one-year-old twins and a newborn, the aunt was struggling to make ends meet. The former Girl Scouts adopted the entire family for Christmas.
The girls shopped for bicycles with helmets for each child, including tiny tricycles for the twins. They also purchased developmental toys and coats, shoes, underwear, socks and clothing to outfit each child for the winter. They used the last of their leftover cookie sale money to purchase three extra-large boxes of diapers.
For the girls, the whole experience has been eye-opening, former troop leaders Doris Stark and Stacy Hyde said. Learning about children in foster care, shopping for younger children and discovering that thousands of children will spend Christmas in foster care was difficult.
“Knowing that there are children like them who can’t live at home because it’s not safe was a new idea to them,” Stark said. “But it was also meaningful for them to see that there are good parts, too – there are people who help and people who care and their kindness will have a big impact.”
